Check out some photos from my latest Fatherland pilgrimage.

[Rick Lee]

I'm sitting in Bergisch Gladbach near Cologne as I write and the trip is winding down. It hasn't been a relaxing vacation at all, mainly because of all the driving. Germany is no more fun to drive in. It's become horribly congested since I was last here in 2005 and the highways are nothing but work zones with narrowed lanes and lowered speed limits. But we have seen some good stuff.

Why can't we get these in the US? They're ubiquitous here.



The only kind of shopping that really matters.



My wife didn't know there were Minis other than the current model she has.



My wife still has a hard time distinguishing between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King. But here she is a few meters from where Martin Luther was born in Eisleben.



On Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. No idea if it's real.



This was super cool. It's a formerly divided village on the border between Thueringen and Bayern where they left the fortifications in place (and maintain them) as a memorial. This place was very hard to find even with the GPS. No signage at all once off the hwy.









more to come

[Rick Lee]

One of countless cool cars we can't get in the US, a BMW 1 series diesel wagon.



One of the world's best beers, which you can only buy around Munich.



BMW Welt in Munich.





My wife would get really upset if I tried this in our house.



The X1 in 4 cyl. diesel, coming to the US in March and my wife's next car.



Will post more photos later. We managed a quick stop by the new Porsche Museum, but they closed an hour earlier than they told me on the phone, so we didn't have much time once we arrived. Arrrggghhh

[Rick Lee]

Quick stop in Salzburg en route to friends in Klagenfurt. Another of the world's best beers, only locally available.



Dessert.



Fiat 500, a new retro version of the old one. Very cool car.



Very cool gravestone at the church in St. Veit/Glan.



Hochosterwitz, a super castle near St. Veit/Glan. The best thing about this part of Austria is that no foreigners know about it, so there are no crowds.



A dear friend's wife passed away since I last saw him and he's remarried now. His new wife is 57 and drives this and the Fiat 500 above. Very cool lady, obviously with great taste. She's had it since new too!



I had no idea Ruf made 993 mufflers.

[widgeon13]

Great pics, sorry the vacation hasn't been more relaxing but I know what you mean about the driving. We go back every couple of years and it's hard to find stretches of autobahn where you can drive at mach 1 any more. I still enjoy the visits, European drivers seem so much more disciplined than drivers in NA. I always think the most dangerous part of the trip is driving home from the airport.

Auf Wiedersehen, gute fahrt!

[Dottore]

Great pics. Thanks for sharing. Always good to be in the Fatherland.

A friend of mine (a writer) bought one of those Octagonal DDR watchtowers and uses it as a place to get away and write.

[azasadny]

Rick,
Great pics! Thanks for posting them!

[ODDJOB UNO]

well looks like your soaking up the local bier. im jealous as hell. havent been back since 1972. and i spent an entire summer there breaking the fun barrier.



send some pics of the local "OOM PAA-PAA" girls. some of the girls in the hofbrau house were literally drop dead beautiful. others were built like russian olympians on steroids and could whip any man alive! scarey wasnt the word especially when they had their hands full of liter bier steins!

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by Dottore

A friend of mine (a writer) bought one of those Octagonal DDR watchtowers and uses it as a place to get away and write.

I climbed up into one of these and it was not a very comfortable place. You climb up a ladder and there's not much room once up there.

[tcar]

Great pics.

The Fiat 500 will be here in the US within a year. At your Chrysler dealer.

I've seen them doing high altitude testing here in Colorado. Had 5 of them plus a new Mini and a Dodge Durango chase cars.

[kevin993]

Awesome pics. Keep 'em coming if you have more. Making me look forward to our tour of Berlin, Dresden and surrounding areas in May.

[Joeaksa]

You baaastard! Now I am both hungry AND thirsty!

Brings back lots of memories... have fun over there. Am trying to make it back to Nurnburg for the Christmas Market this fall.

Joe A

[kevin993]

Originally Posted by Joeaksa

You baaastard! Now I am both hungry AND thirsty!

Brings back lots of memories... have fun over there. Am trying to make it back to Nurnburg for the Christmas Market this fall.

Joe A

From 2006:

[Rick Lee]

Yeah, the Weihnachtsmarkts are awesome in Germany. That's the only part of Trier I really liked when I lived there for a year in college. We bummed around Cologne yesterday with a friend (Joe knew her father) and had lunch at the Frueh Koelsch restaurant.

I'm wearing my Sinn U2 on this trip and it's been losing a few minutes a week for a while now. Turns out Sinn has a partner right down the street from where I am that has the argon capsule replacement capability and it's pretty cheap too. So I'm dropping it off today and will have to make it home tomorrow sans watch, which will be very difficult. I may have to pick up another one here, since it'd raise no eyebrows with customs with my only bringing one watch back home. And I'd get some sales tax back at the airport too.

Kevin, if you're driving, the highways in the east are SUPER now, much newer and less crowded than those in the west and south. The tiny village I always go to sort of near Halle was a good 45-60 min. worth of winding through tiny roads from the hwy. to get there. Now there's actually an exit off the new A38 for this village, called Obhausen, and it's three km. from the exit. Unreal. It felt so weird to be chugging along at 180 km/h, exit and then arrive in another five min. I can remember when those roads were all cobblestones and the only cars on them were Trabbis and Ladas. Eastern Germany was always the best and most interesting, and it's gotten better in recent years.

[Rick Lee]

A few more. This is Hohenwerfen, a very cool castle you can see from the highway when south of Salzburg. I've driven past this place 20x over the years and finally decided to stop for some photos (at the wife's behest). Next time we'll do the tour.



A little Porsche Museum porn.

[Rick Lee]

The sawed in half 997 was very cool, but difficult to photograph properly.



Drool.











These were for sale.

[Rick Lee]

Proof I was there.



If you've been to Zuffenhausen before, you know that little traffic circle between the Porsche Zentrum, Museum and factory buildings. It was crazy that they now have traffic lights inside the circle. Don't both defeat each other's purpose? Traffic around there was awful and people blew through the green lights because they lasted less than five seconds. Every car took off so fast and then slammed on their brakes for the next red light a few feet away. Yellow lights and newly red ones got ignored, which is rare in Germany.

[slodave]

Looks like a good time.

[Rick Lee]

From Stuttgart we crawled in traffic for many hours still to Strassbourg. On the way from there to Paris, we stopped in Verdun to check out some WWI stuff. Very cool and warrants a lot more time on a future trip.



Over 90 yrs. later the ground still looks like a lunar landscape with grass and trees over the craters.

[Rick Lee]

This is no way to spend a vacation.

[VincentVega]

Badass RL. Are you stopping on the east coast for a little while or heading straight home?